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BY MAJOR RICHARDSON.
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Of all the tribes of Indians with whom it has been our lot to mix, and these have not been a few, we know of none who can surpass in the native dignity and nobleness of manhood the Saukie tribe. We, however, speak not of them as they exist at the present day. Many years have elapsed since fighting against Hull, Winchester, and Harrison, we numbered, as co-operating with the division of the army to which we were attached, three thousand fighting men of the élite of the warriors of the principal tribes, headed by the indomitable and ever lamented Tecumseh, whom, as a boy, then first attempting his coup d’essai at arms, we ever loved and revered, and with whom half an hour before his fall, we shook the hand of cordiality, and separation—forever. We repeat, at that period there were, varying slightly in number at intervals, not less than three thousand with the eighth division of the British army—and these were the choice warriors of the following tribes: Shawanees, Delawares, Munsees, Hurons, Wyandots, Miamis, Chippewas, Ottowas, Kickapoos, Foxes, Minouminies, Pottowattamies, Winnebagoes, Loups, Sioux, and lastly, for we cannot recollect some two or three others—the Saukies. Each tribe had its peculiar and distinctive characteristics—but no one so markedly so as the last named people, and next to them the Winnebagoes. We have remarked that we do not know what the Indian tribes, even in their original hunting grounds have become since so long abstinence from the pursuits of war and adventure, but then, the Saukies were the noblest looking men of all we have ever since beheld in any quarter of the globe we have visited. They were a collective impersonation of the dignity of man, as sent first upon earth by the will of God; nor were these characteristics of manly beauty peculiar only to a few, but general to all. A Saukie warrior, arrived at the full stage of manhood, was tall—generally from five feet eleven to six feet in height, and of proportionate symmetry of person. Their carriage was erect, dignified, graceful. Their look serene, imposing without sternness. Their features bore the Roman impress, and seldom did we look upon a Saukie, arrived at mature age, without the memory adverting at once to the dignified senators of the forum of which we had so recently been reading. There was a nobleness—a consciousness—a native dignity about these people that always inspired us with a certain degree of awe and respect; and so deeply was this sentiment implanted in us at that very early period of a somewhat adventurous life, that our beau ideal of manly beauty has ever since continued to be a Saukie warrior of the commencement of the present century.
The period of occurrence of the incidents of our little tale was some four or five years prior to the American declaration of war against Great Britain, and when the North West Company of Canada, whose wealth, acquired in the pursuit of that trade, was at one time great, held various stockade forts in the heart of the Indian country. The ambulating village of the Saukies was then situated on a branch of one of those small streams on which the forts were usually built, and at a distance of about forty miles from that which will come more immediately under our notice.
White Bear was one of the most honored of the Saukie chiefs, and even among men whom we have just described as so eminently prepossessing, he was remarkable. He was forty years of age, and possessed a majesty of mien and carriage that won to him the respect of his tribe not more than did his wisdom in the council, and his daring in war. He had but one wife, and she was much younger than himself, but years had so little to do with the estimate in which he was generally held by the squaws of his tribe, and particularly by his wife, whose passion for him was ardent as his own for her, that this disparity had never even been noticed. Indeed, their friendship for each other was the remark of the whole tribe. For an Indian, he took great pride in her beauty, and spent with her many hours that ought to have been devoted to the chase. War for some years past there had been none.
Sunflower was tall and graceful. She had very black, soft, languishing eyes—marked, yet delicate eyebrows. Her nose, like that of her tribe, was Roman, but more delicately marked than that of the men, her teeth were white and even, her mouth small, and her hair glossy as the raven’s wing, and darker than the squirrel’s fur. The full and massive club into which it was tastefully rolled and placed behind the back of her neck, proved its fullness and redundance. She was elegantly formed. She had never been a mother, and her nut-brown bosom had all the roundness of contour of a Venus, and the smoothness of the Parian marble. Her hands and feet, like those of all her race, were small, and yet there was a development of her whole person that set all art to improve it at defiance. Late at night she always bathed in the sweet waters of the stream, and on its low banks combed the long and luxuriant hair that overshadowed her person, and with the chewed root of the grape-vine, added fragrance to her breath, even while she increased the dazzling whiteness of the teeth she rubbed with it. To crown all the fascinations of this Indian wife—this favored daughter of a race in which the interesting and the beautiful are so rarely found, she had a voice whose every note was laughing music.
There was one in that camp, and of that tribe, who saw the happiness of White Bear, not with envy, for his nature was too generous for so low a passion, but with regret that destiny had not given to him the beautiful, the enchanting Sunflower. He was consumed with the most ardent love. He lived only in and for her—hung upon her look, fed upon her glance, and yet he had never spoken to her. His soul melted away with love for her. To look at her alone was enjoyment the greatest he could taste. The chase was deserted, his very flute, in which he excelled, and on which he often played to the great delight of the admiring Indian girls, was neglected. Not so his dress. No young Saukie bestowed more pains in decorating his person than did the tall and gracefully formed Wawandah, and this not from any foolish love of display, as because he wished to appear favorably in her eyes, should she ever be induced to regard him. The savage equally with the civilized, tries to win a woman as much by dress as by address. But in vain Wawandah courted his toilet. The vermilion was applied to his cheek and lips without the desired result—the Sunflower never once caught his eye, or if she did, she was too much engaged in thinking of the White Bear, to be conscious that any other of her tribe sought to win her attention.
Days, weeks passed on, with the same unvarying result. Wawandah was sorely grieved at heart. He began to pine away. His soft and melancholy eye became dull. He had no pleasure in the chase which took him far from the encampment. Every step that he trod in pursuit led him farther from the spot trodden by her, the very soles of whose feet he worshiped, and he could not continue. Thus, when a stray buffalo would cross him, easy to be killed, and offering himself as an unerring mark to his rifle, his passion would so trouble his mind as to unnerve his arm. Then the ball would pass unwounding by, and the half sneers of his companions arise and bring the blush to his cheek; as they bade him tauntingly leave the rifle to be handled by men, and go and amuse himself with the women. In like manner he sought to avoid the war-dance, and the ball playing, and the foot-race, for his mind was too painfully interested to engage unrestrainedly in these amusements, and unless excellence was to be obtained in whatever he undertook, Wawandah cared not to be a competitor. Wawandah was beginning to lose caste not only with the elders of the tribe but with the young men who were jealous of his superiority, and so much was he talked of that the very women knew all that was said by the warriors, and the Sunflower like the rest. It was the first time Wawandah had ever come under the notice of her he so fondly loved, and as he knew the cause, he secretly blessed the fate which had, even under circumstances so humiliating to the pride of a warrior, been the cause of her bestowing even the slightest attention upon him.
The White Bear had been the friend of the father of Wawandah, who for ten long years, according to Indian computation, had slumbered in his grave with the red stained pole at its head. Since he had taken the Sunflower to his bosom, he had neglected the boy, for his own breast was full of the natural selfishness of love, and he had not found time to regard him as he would have done had he been free from the influence that now exclusively governed him in all things. But when the Sunflower told him that there was a youth in the village who, oppressed by some secret care, had so degenerated in the tastes and pursuits of the young warriors, as absolutely to have incurred their scorn, her husband recollected the name, and determined as far as he could to comfort him, and to restore to him the respect of his tribe; and straightway he sent a young boy to the wigwam of Wawandah, who was then lying on the skin of a grizzly bear, which he had killed before the spirit of guilty love had entered into his heart, and the recollection of his skill and prowess in obtaining which was the only circumstance that still preserved to him a certain consideration among the elders of the tribe. Astonished, almost dismayed at the message, Wawandah rose from his couch, and disguising his feelings, said to the young messenger, “That it was good. He would go to White Bear’s wigwam presently.” The boy departed, and Wawandah was torn with emotion. What was the meaning of this message? Since the death of his father, the Black Vulture, the White Bear had taken no other notice of him than he had of the young warriors generally; then how was it that he sent for him now, when almost shunned by the young men of his tribe; he bowed submissively and uncomplainingly to the effects of the passion that was preying upon his heart, rendering him regardless of all things else. Why, he again asked himself, was this? Or had the White Bear discovered his secret in the only way in which it could have transpired—through his eyes—and sent for him to reprove and to threaten. Still he was glad that he was sent for, no matter for what reason, for there was a faint hope at his heart that the Sunflower might be present at the interview in the wigwam, and he felt that it would be pleasant to be condemned in her hearing for that which she alone had, however innocently, occasioned.